Parking in Hillcrest? You bet your asphalt

Shuttered restaurants’ owner allows 36 spots

In Hillcrest, this is what passes for hot news: a patch of hot blacktop.

“I never thought I’d be excited about a parking lot or parking spaces,” admitted Amy Capano, a Hillcrest Business Association board member. “But I’m so ecstatic.”

She wasn’t alone. Friday’s ribbon-cutting at this parking lot drew camera crews, politicians, merchants and the occasional baffled glance from passers-by. Todd Gloria, whose City Council district encompasses Hillcrest, called the 36 freshly-striped parking spaces “the Miracle on Sixth Avenue.”

What explains this outbreak of asphalt kissing? This: The lot is sorely-needed and adjacent to an eyesore, the moldering remains of two restaurants, Pernicano’s and the attached Casa di Baffi Steakhouse. The former opened on the 3800 block of Sixth Avenue in 1950, the latter on the 3800 block of Fifth Avenue in 1960 by George Pernicano, a Santee cattle rancher and minority owner of the Chargers. For decades, these restaurants maintained an old-school glamour, attracting Jackie Gleason, Jimmy Dorsey and the like.

But Pernicano closed both places 25 years ago. With their padlocked doors, grimy windows and rust-stained signs, the buildings’ glamorous vibe has vanished. Forget the Rat Pack. A few years ago, the restaurants attracted larcenous pack rats, who looted the kitchens of copper pipes, bottles of booze and pizza pans.

“Thieves broke in and stripped these places of everything of value,” said Stanley Paul Cook, a spokesman for the Pernicanos.

Pernicano, now 92, spent years entertaining the hopes that someone in his family would reopen these institutions, which occupy a prominent spot between University and Robinson avenues. But his sons, Larry and Gary, were busy raising families and running newer Pernicano restaurants in El Cajon, Scripps Ranch and La Jolla.

As the abandoned buildings fell into disrepair, the elder Pernicano was sometimes portrayed as a stubborn codger whose unwillingness to sell or renovate had infected the neighborhood with blight.

“We’ve had numerous telephone conversations trying to encourage the family to lease it, sell it, do something to make it a productive use,” Sheri Carr, then the city’s deputy director of neighborhood code compliance, told the Union-Tribune in 2007. “We have not been successful with those conversations.”

“It was an emotional issue, more than anything else,” Cook said Friday, explaining Pernicano’s inability to let go. “This restaurant has been here 60 years.”

But he praised the Pernicanos for adding 36 spaces to an area that is well-stocked with restaurants and nightclubs, yet perpetually short of parking.

“Parking is a top priority in Hillcrest,” he said. “Parking, quite simply, means jobs.”

Capano, who owns the Cathedral home décor shop on University Avenue, agreed. “I’ve had this business for 15 years and that’s the only thing I hear about Hillcrest that is negative: parking. It deters customers, because they think they won’t find parking.”

Now, shoppers’ chances are better. The lot, leased by the Pernicanos to Sunset Parking, will be open round the clock. Rates run from $2 an hour to $5 for nine hours. The solar-powered ticket dispenser accepts major credit cards. While the tall “Pernicano’s/Casa di Baffi” sign remains unlit, two new overhead lights have been installed.

From Sixth Avenue, the place looks like — well, that depends on your perspective. To the casual observer, this resembles any other 25,000-square-foot swath of earth covered in fresh asphalt. No big deal.

To those possessed of a broader vision, though, this looks like a blacktopped slice of heaven.

“If you know parking in Hillcrest,” Gloria said, “you know this is a very, very important day.”